Media Ethics
Today I will be talking about Media Ethics and how
ethics play a huge role in how media functions within society. It is said that
Ethics is a broad topic and can touch on many topics such as mental health,
social inclusion, representation, sensitivity, balance, truth, and transparency.
A good place to start considering ethics is to explore the UN sustainable
development goals. The following 17 goals set out a roadmap for developing a
more ethical and equal global society. They are not directly related to digital media, but they will give
you a good idea of some of the issues of inequality that can affect our
perspective on ethics. However, in my research, I have found a few sources that
talks about today’s topic of discussion.
One video I have watched
called “The Medium is the message” by Folding Ideas where they talk about how
we know very little about the medium and still to this day quite so radical. 51
years of after understanding media was first published the “medium is the message”
is still a challenging and radical idea. In McLuhan’s own word “This is merely
to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium that is of any
extension of ourselves result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs
by each extension of ourselves” (Understanding Media, p.7) the idea is that mediums
have a far greater impact on the fundamental shape and nature of society that’s
delivered through that medium, which I find interesting as before I thought
nothing of it as I didn’t think it was any important. But I have now realized that
these mediums help reshape the ideas of our physical lives.
Another video I stumbled
upon is the Cambridge Analytica Scandal which I have never heard of before.
What I learned about this is that Cambridge Analytica is a data marketing firm
where they harvest online information to create microtargeted content which the
company claims that it “uses data to change audience behaviour” now a whistleblower
has come forward to expose its practices. The CEO Alexander Nix was working with
Wylie at SCL and wooed the then Breitbart editor, Steve Bannon, and hedge fund billionaire
Robert Mercer. Then comes a Cambridge data professor Aleksandr Kogan approached
the company afterwards. According to an employee, Kogan offered them something
that was way cheaper, faster and of a quality that nothing matched. This employee
said “They had apps of Facebook that were given special permission to harvest data, not from the person who used the app or joins the app but also it would then go
into their entire friends’ data as well. Such as status update, like, in some
cases private messages. And would only need a few thousand to expand their
entire social networks which would scale to most of America.” For me, this is very worrying as I didn’t expect a company go to this length to the privacy of
others just to profit off their privacy which to me is very disgusting.
However, In February 2018, Nix faced a parliamentary inquiry on fake news which
Nix too claims to be false, but he was lying.
Thank you for tuning in.
Sources:
UN Sustainable Development Goals
Minisode - The Medium is the Message
What is the Cambridge Analytica scandal?
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